iFixit confirms leaked iPad 3 display resolution

If you can remember all the way back to last week, you may recall a leaked display component that was allegedly from the iPad 3. It looked legit enough, and appeared to show quadruple the pixels (double the resolution) of the iPad 2 under a microscope. At the time, there wasn’t a lot of reason to doubt the authenticity of the part, but sometimes bogus claims are made.

Today any doubt that this was indeed an iPad 3 display can probably be put to rest. The display was sent to techno-handyman site iFixit (by MacRumors, who published the original story), to give it a more thorough examination. The big hope was that iFixit’s engineers would be able to connect the display to an iPad 2 and power it up.

That didn’t happen. As it turns out, the iPad 3 display has a different LCD cable, one which isn’t compatible with current iPads. iFixit pondered the prospect of splicing connectors and rigging the display to fit the iPad 2; but the site decided against it, citing time constraints and no guarantee of success.

What iFixit was able to do, though, was confirm what was originally reported about the display: that it has a resolution of 2048×1536. How can anyone determine the resolution of a powered-off display? By looking at it under a microscope, and comparing it to an iPad 2 display, of course. An equal area on both displays shows exactly 4x the pixels in the iPad 3 as in the iPad 2. There are 786,432 pixels on the iPad 2’s 9.7-inch display. The iPad 3 will have 3,145,728 pixels, or 2048×1536. Ergo, Retina display.

Though dummy parts have been known to fool journalists and bloggers before, this leaked display is almost certainly the real deal. A display with resolution this high isn’t likely something that could easily be faked by suppliers, and it is obviously tailor-made for an iPad. So you’d may as well label it a sure thing that the next iPad will have an astounding “Retina” display.

The details of the iPad 3 have been Apple’s worst-kept secret since the iPhone 4 landed in a Redwood City bar. In addition to the 264ppi display, it is expected to sport a faster — possibly quad-core — chip, a bigger battery, a slightly thicker (but more tapered) case than the iPad 2, and upgraded cameras. We’re all assuming that it will be called the iPad 3, but Apple could potentially brand it as an iPad 2S, iPad HD, or something else (don’t bet on it though).